"Nobody said it was easy; no one ever said it would be so hard."The Scientist - Coldplay
In my last post I mentioned Phoebe's Sleep Issues so I suppose I should elaborate. The thing is it's been so long since then and so much has changed that I'm not sure I can remember what I wanted to say. So I'll try to start at the beginning.
A few weeks ago Phoebe seemed to be getting herself into a nice little Gina Ford-esque routine. She'd feed around midnight and again around 5am (I don't think Gina actually allows this but never mind) then wake around 7am and have some breakfast before heading off for a nap around 9. She'd nap for about 45 minutes then wake until around midday and nap for about an hour and a half. She sometimes napped for around 40 minutes in the late afternoon too. This lasted a few days. Not long at all really.
For some reason I found it really stressful when she snapped back out of the routine. All of a sudden she was all over the place. She'd wake up at 5am, nap whenever, if ever, and we'd spend ages trying to settle her at night. I decided she was overtired so one night about 2 weeks ago we moved her to her own room and brought her bedtime forward to 6.30pm. That first night it took us an hour to get her to sleep so she ended up going to bed at her usual bedtime but the previous night had also taken an hour which meant she went to sleep an hour later than usual, so perhaps we were getting somewhere. Gradually over the next couple of days she got into this new rhythm and things seemed to be going quite well until suddenly it all went pear-shaped again a few days after my chat with my boss.
I don't remember the details now as it is all a blur but it seemed very important to us that we get her into a routine and that she sleep well during the day and she didn't seem to be doing that. It's possible she was picking up on my anxiety regarding next year following the Return To Work talk.
Then again, it also seemed to happen around the same time that the milk blister occurred (see next post).
Now I don't know what's going on. I was going mad for a while. One morning, after spending an eternity trying to get her to take a morning nap, I took her for a walk in the pram out of desperation. It was hot, it was not the best time of day to be out walking. I had spent days, if not weeks, at home trying to help Phoebe into her routine, seemingly for nothing. Every morning that I struggled to get her to sleep signalled another day that she wasn't getting enough and another day I'd have to wait to get her Sleep Issues sorted. I phoned Toby and told him I was irrationally angry with him for not putting her into her cot for a nap that morning. (Toby had looked after her whilst I slept.) I cried. I was so fed up with it all.
Since then I've had to chill out and let her fit her naps into my day again, within reason. Perhaps I was feeling under pressure to get her into a routine before she was ready, in preparation for childcare next year. But then I was also convinced that she was ready for a routine. So what threw her out? The milk blister? My anxiety? Her vaccinations? Her cold? Her cough? Teething? All of the above? Toby had the nerve to suggest it might be to do with too much caffeine in my diet. HOW VERY DARE HE!
It's hard when sleep is out because it throws everything else out too and weaning is hard enough without not knowing when you should feed and whether it should be breast or solid. I worry that she can't settle herself, that she doesn't have regular naps, that her naps aren't long enough, that she's not eating enough, that she's having too many breastfeeds, that she's waking in the night for feeds when she shouldn't, that she isn't getting enough sleep.
So I have no idea whether I've covered what I meant to cover but the situation is currently this. She generally goes to bed well although we have to cuddle her almost to sleep. I've been sticking the sling on and walking around her bedroom. It's probably the wrong thing to do but I really just need her to catch up on sleep and get settled again. She often wakes up once in the night at quite random times. She then wakes up around 5am. For a while last week she was waking much later or she'd wake at 5am then feed and sleep again for an hour or two. That led me to wonder if her early waking is temperature related. A couple of times she's woken with a full nappy or because she's coughing but even then she won't go back to sleep. She's up for the day. This generally means she's only had 10 or 11 hours sleep. Today and yesterday she napped well but before that she was having three or four 30-40 minute catnaps, resulting in nowhere near enough sleep for a 7 1/2 month old baby.
It's frustrating because if a baby doesn't get enough sleep, it doesn't sleep well. I feel like we can't do anything else in terms of setting a routine and reducing breastfeeds until she's caught up on her sleep and is sleeping long hours at night and napping well during the day. I don't really feel in a massive hurry to establish a routine or drop feeds, but it can be very difficult for me to plan anything when I don't know when she's going to be sleeping.
Hopefully I'll find some time over the next couple of days to tell you about the milk blister.
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